Abstract

There is the perception of an increasing range of legal duties being imposed on professionals towards their clients. No doubt that is as much due to the increasing sophistication and complexity of the services they offer as to their own claims of professionalism.

This is true also of insurance brokers. A steady stream of judicial decisions, both here and in other jurisdictions, continue to describe the range of duties they owe their clients, the insured, and in the process apparently to expand that range. In reality, though, it may merely be that these decisions illustrate the application of well-known and basic duties in modern circumstances.
One such decision is that of PFC Foods CC v Three Peaks Management (Pty) Ltd [2012] JOL 29486 (KZD). It concerned the duties of an insurance broker towards its client insured as regards the prevention of under-insurance in the case of business interruption insurance and as regards the application of average.